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8 April 2015

Digging In The Crates - Riding The Astral Plane

Our crate digging, deep in the bowels of Amazo Plaza now brings us to our extensive collection of Cars and Car Conversions magazines. Triple C (as it was fondly known) was a tuning and motorsport magazine that ran from February 1965 to October 2003 and was only really rivalled by Hot Car magazine.
Its also a great reading; take this issue for example. the cover feature is a back-to-back shootout between a standard MKI Vauxhall Astra GTE (Vauxhall's press car) and a full-on Irmscher-modified one. While the extra add-on parts aren't to everyone's taste, the modifications to the mechanicals made this car a much more rounded hot hatchback, a considerable feat considering that the MKI GTE was a pretty great package when new.
However, it doesn't appear to be in the stars for many of the cars we see in these scans to survive; The Irmscher car (FEA 696Y) is untaxed since May 1991, A478 LTM (the press car) is untaxed since December 1999, while the two Opel Kadetts on page 45 fare no better; WPP 901X last saw the road legally in October 1997 while MNK 895V seems to have bit the dust in May 1996. The fact that the records show on DVLA at least means that they haven't been scrapped does at least give some hope that they're holed up in various garages across the land, waiting to be discovered.
Enjoy the scans.